The Democratic National Convention this week is contributing to my website posts each day in some way or another. I’m posting this late, but for this date, I decided to show political buttons from my own collection. Buttons do not indicate how I voted in any of these elections–they indicate that I was given buttons by people I knew or at events I went to. Some of them pre-date when I reached voting age. I don’t hesitate for a moment to identify as a Democrat, never have, but though it’s been a long–very long–time (more often in local or state races), I’ve been known to vote across party lines.
The only one I have is a rainbow with Voter stamped on it. Since we have mail-in ballots out here in the middle of nowhere desert, I don’t get to wear it on a collective voting day here, but I have a computerized delusion that my vote exists, even if its always trampled over with trumps.
I don’t subscribe to party politics; I’ve been either totally random or if something really sparks my interest, I’ll do my own independent research and make my own mind up without the propaganda and slander. But, I think this year’s decision was made before, and that will be my same outcome.
If I guess wrong, I’m not voting anymore. That was the toughest decision I have ever faced, ever, in my entire life, and I feel so run over by those tanks that ran over those students that demanded Democracy. The humane decency of Democracy has to prevail over nazi dictatorship, somehow. It’s not about dollar signs and power, Republicans; it’s about We The People (and that means Everyone).
Whenever I feel like “what difference does it make,” I seem always to bend toward optimism. Maybe my candidate doesn’t win (and that’s certainly happened), but at least I used my voice and tried, and that matters to me. And I think of the people I’ve loved to whom voting mattered so much that they never stopped voting–during Depression, during war, during the indifference of a majority when they were fighting HIV and AIDS–and I vote to honor their determination never to give in to cynicism and hopelessness. Also, even if the BIG election doesn’t go my way, I feel I have an obligation to vote on judges and school board members and city council, because I will NEVER support racism, sexism, homophobia, book banning, and any war on the poor, the young, the elderly, etc. Those local elections matter.